PHOTO BY JAMES ABARR

HISTORIC CHURCH: Mission San Estevan del Rey dominates Acoma Pueblo's historic "Sky City," which nestles atop a 367-foot-high mesa in west-central New Mexico. The church, which dates from 1629, is still in use.

The legendary walls of Acoma

By James Abarr
For the Journal
Across west-central New Mexico, magnificent and eye-catching mesas of countless shapes and sizes fill the landscape and appear to sail, like a great fleet of ships, across a desert sea.
Atop one of these great sandstone pillars, 65 miles west of Albuquerque, lies an Indian city whose origins are lost in antiquity. It has been continuously inhabited for at least 800 years, and a walk along its dirt streets between rows of terraced adobe homes offers a brief journey into another time.
This is the famed "Sky City" of the Acoma Indians, spread across 70 acres of a craggy mesa top, 367 feet above a piñon-and-juniper-splashed plain.
"Sky City," or Old Acoma as the Indians also call it, has dazzled visitors ever since Hernando de Alvarado became the first European to see it in 1540.
Alvarado, a Spanish officer in the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, described the pueblo as "one of the strongest ever seen because the city is built upon a very high rock. The ascent was so difficult that we repented climbing to the top. The houses are three stories high. The people are of the same type as those in the province of Cibola (present-day Zuni), and they have abundant supplies of maize, beans and turkeys like those of New Spain (Mexico)."
A Spanish soldier in a later expedition called Acoma "the greatest stronghold ever seen. The natives ... came down to meet us peacefully, although they might have spared themselves the trouble and remained on their rock, for we would have been unable to disturb them in the least."
Acoma, however, was not as impregnable as it seemed, as later events would demonstrate -- events that triggered one of the most amazing feats of arms in the annals of the Southwest.

War and reprisal
In late 1598, only a few months after Don Juan de Oñate, newly-appointed royal governor, had established the first permanent Spanish colony in New Mexico at San Juan, north of Santa Fe, the Acomas bid to reject Spanish rule.
In December of that year, Juan de Zaldivar, 28-year-old nephew of Oñate, was leading a party of 30 soldiers on the way to join his uncle when he stopped at Acoma to request food and supplies for his men. The Spaniards were invited into the village atop the mesa where, the Indians promised, the visitors would receive everything they needed.
Instead, Zaldivar's men encountered 1,000 warriors, who fell upon the unsuspecting Spaniards and slaughtered Juan and all but four of his men, who escaped to carry word of the massacre to Oñate.
At San Juan, the angry governor swiftly moved to avenge his nephew's death and wipe out this defiance of Spanish authority.
First, however, it was essential to seek the blessings of the church.
Oñate called upon Fray Alonzo Martinez, the Father Commissary of New Mexico, and posed the question: "What conditions are necessary to wage just war?"
After consulting Scripture and church law, Fray Alonzo determined:
"If the cause of war is universal peace, or peace in the kingdom, he may justly wage war and destroy any obstacle in the way of peace until it is effectively achieved."
Oñate, declaring that there could be no peace in the land until Acoma was punished, immediately proclaimed that he would wage "guerra a sangre y fuego," war by blood and fire. The governor dispatched Vincente de Zaldivar, 24-year-old brother of Juan, with 70 soldiers to punish the pueblo.
Near sundown on a cold and blustery January day in 1599, Vincente and his men reined their horses under the cliffs of Acoma and demanded that the pueblo submit to the royal authority.
When hundreds of warriors lining the mesa top greeted this demand with taunts and jeers, Spanish sharpshooters opened fire. The bodies of a number of warriors plunged to the rocks below, "leaving their miserable souls up in their lofty fortress," as Capt. Gaspar de Villagrá, one of Zaldivar's officers, later recorded.
At dawn the following day, Zaldivar sent the bulk of his men in a frontal attack while a picked band of 14 soldiers circled the mesa, scaled the cliffs and fell on the unsuspecting Indians from the rear.
For two days, a bloody battle raged -- street by street and house by house -- until the Acomas had had enough and surrendered. More than 600 warriors lay dead and a portion of the pueblo had been put to the torch.
There is no record of Spanish casualties, but they must have been few.
It was a startling outcome. How had 70 men defeated 1,000 or more?
Acoma elders answered the question by saying they knew their people were beaten "the moment they saw a great warrior riding on a white charger in the sky above the Spanish army. He carried a sword of fire, wore a long beard and was tended by a lady of great beauty in a blue robe and crowned with stars."
Who were these mysterious figures? To the Spaniards, the answer was simple. The battle had been won for them by the great patron of all Spain, St. James of Compostula -- whom all Spanish soldiers called upon in battle -- and the Queen of Heaven herself.
In a less-mystical vein, the Spaniards were victorious because of superior tactics and weapons, unbridled determination, better discipline and absolute confidence in their fighting skills.
Zaldivar returned to San Juan with more than 500 Acoma captives, who now awaited Spanish justice. It was swift and harsh.
To set an example and to discourage others from challenging the authority of Spain, Oñate sentenced all males over 25 years old to have one foot cut off and to serve 20 years in slavery.
Women and children were condemned to 20 years of servitude.

Towering church
Sounds of battle no longer disturb Acoma's solitude, and four centuries after Zaldivar, the people still hold sway in "Sky City."
Visitors no longer enter the pueblo via rock ladders formed by toeholds worn into the sheer cliffs by centuries of Indian feet. Today, air-conditioned buses whisk tourists up a twisting road through giant boulders to the mesa top and into another age.
Two-story adobe homes, some centuries old and some obviously newer, line the rocky and dusty streets. Against the walls of many homes are the traditional ladders -- the only access to the upper floors. In one house is a window with a pane of mica, an opaque silicate used to cover openings long before the coming of glass.
On the southeast corner of the mesa, the sturdy adobe walls of Mission San Estevan del Rey -- St. Stephen the King -- tower over the pueblo.
Started in 1629 under the direction of Fray Juan Ramirez, this venerable church required 11 years to complete. The lengthy construction period is not surprising given the fact that all building materials had to be carried up the mesa's steep cliffs. A scarcity of wood in the vicinity of the mesa made it necessary to haul timber from the slopes of Mount Taylor, 40 miles to the north.
Acoma legend relates that when Fray Ramirez first came to Acoma, he was met with hostility and was denied entrance to the pueblo.
Among the scores of Indians gathered on the rim of the mesa to jeer the padre was a young girl, who inadvertently fell from the cliffs. Miraculously, the legend relates, she escaped death on the rocks below when she was caught by Fray Ramirez in the folds of his billowing gray robes.
From that moment, the courageous padre was a hero, and he would spend nearly 30 years as apostle to the Acomas.
During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, many Spanish churches throughout New Mexico were destroyed, but San Estevan survived. However, the resident priests, Fray Lucas Maldonado and Fray Cristobal Figueroa, were not so fortunate. Indian rebels hurled the padres to their deaths from the top of the mesa.
Today, San Estevan, which has undergone a number of stabilization and repair projects, is still in use after 3{ centuries. Masses are said periodically, and the church is the focal point of special events such as the annual Christmas festival and the September Feast of San Estevan, the pueblo's patron saint.
Twin bell towers, 50 feet high, flank the entrance to the nave, 120 feet long and 40 feet wide. One tower still contains the cast-iron bell given to Acoma by the king of Spain. Embossed on one side is the date -- 1710.
In the dimly lit nave with its hard-packed floor and walls decorated with religious figures and symbols, thick vigas and hand-carved wooden corbels support the roof. Behind the high altar are rows of religious paintings, including the famous "miracle painting" of St. Joseph.
In the 1850s, this painting nearly triggered a war between Acoma and neighboring Laguna Pueblo, 15 miles to the east.
Acoma leaders believed the painting had brought prosperity to the pueblo and was responsible for a number of years of bountiful harvests. Laguna, on the other hand, had been plagued by farming misfortunes.
Laguna leaders believed the Acoma painting was the answer to their problems, so they asked to borrow it. Acoma agreed, and the painting was carried to Laguna with great ceremony.
Over the next several years, prosperity returned to Laguna as crops and harvests improved and livestock herds grew and flourished.
With such a turn in fortunes, Laguna was reluctant to part with the "miracle painting," and Acoma's request for its return was flatly refused. This, of course, did not sit well with Acoma, which promptly threatened to storm Laguna and retrieve the painting by force.
Fortunately, war was averted when the pueblos agreed to let the courts decide the issue, and in 1857, the New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court ordered the painting returned to Acoma.

A fine view
In almost any direction from the summit of Acoma mesa, the view is riveting.
Lines of mesas stretch across the skyline above piñon-dotted plains. To the north, the 11,400-foot summit of Mount Taylor crowns the landscape.
About three miles to the northeast rise the 400-foot-high cliffs of Enchanted Mesa, a great island of yellow sandstone in a grassy sea. This is the ancestral home of the Acoma people, who call the mesa Kadzima, the Accursed.
Tribal legend recounts how a great village once nestled atop Enchanted Mesa. One day, all the people descended the only trail from the lofty summit to harvest crops in the surrounding fields. Three women, who were ill, were left in the village.
Toward evening, the legend says, a great storm arose. Lightning flashed across a black sky, the wind howled and thunder shook the sheer cliffs of Kadzima. Rain heavier than any the people could remember fell in torrents.
When the people sought to return to the shelter of the mesa village, they discovered that the storm had washed out the lone trail, leaving them cut off below and the three women trapped on the summit.
When the mighty storm subsided, the Acomas, spurred by the cries of the women, circled the base of the mesa looking for a way up to rescue them. There was none. As time passed, the cries of the women grew fainter until finally, the legend says, one died and the other two leaped to their deaths rather than face starvation.
In the aftermath, the people moved across the plain to the west and built "Sky City."
Today, Kadzima is a sacred shrine, and the Acomas believe the forbidding mesa is haunted by the spirits of the three women.
Even though the majority of the Acomas have long since left "Sky City" for the newer nearby settlements of Anzac, Acomita and McCarty along Interstate 40, the 13 families that remain in the mesa pueblo keep its centuries-old record as a living community unbroken.
In spirit, however, the "People of the White Rock" have never left, and many return often to pay homage to this revered part of their heritage.